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mediumgayitalian · 2 months

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Blue, blue, blue eyes, wet and red-rimmed. White knuckles clenched around worn canvas. Salty cheeks and bitten-bruised lips.

“I’m running away.”

Echoes in a too-large room, quiet breathing in stale air. Freezing toes on marble floor. Struggling lamplight, gaunt shadows.

“Gimme a minute to pack a bag.”

———

“Shh,” Nico hisses, clamping a hand over Will’s mouth to muffle a shriek. A too-warm hand clutches his hip, scrambling for balance. The rickety wooden lattice creaks under their weight.

The freeze, for one, two, three seconds. Nico strains to hear, watching the crystal-clear, freshly-polished Jalousie window.

No light.

They let out their breath at the same time, Will’s exhale making Nico’s cold hands tingle. At Will’s glare, he removes his hand, wrapping it back around the rung.

“Be more careful, you clumsy fuck.”

“I’m trying!”

To his credit, he really is. He checks and double checks before putting his full weight on the lopsided strips of wood only meant to hold up vines. He doesn’t let go of the rung above him until his feet are firmly planted, and he doesn’t stray far enough from Nico that he couldn’t catch him. He knows the drill.

And, yet.

(Truly, Nico has no idea how he climbed up by himself.)

Thankfully, they make it to the soft lawn in one piece. Will stumbles into a hydrangea bush the second he lets go of the lattice. Nico lands with much more grace, snickering.

“This house hates me,” he whispers, pouting. There are several blue flower petals tangled in his hair; Nico decides not to tell him. “Like, actively.”

“You and me both.”

They sneak quickly across the lawn once Will’s upright again, booking it to Nico’s Jeep. Will takes their bags, tossing them in the back, then slides behind the massive, creepy gargoyle-thing that sits between the garage doors as Nico opens the driver’s door as quietly as physically possible. Once he’s seated, he glances over at Will, waiting for his signal — hand held up in wait, four seconds, five, six — then a rapid shooing motion, eyes trained at the security camera. Fast as he can, Nico shifts into neutral without starting the car, craning his neck to watch out the back window as he peels out of the driveway and onto the street. Once safely behind the massive pine tree that marks the edge of the property, he parks, turning the car on and wincing at the noise.

Two minutes later, Will comes barrelling down the driveway, nearly tripping over untied shoelaces.

“I fucked up, they totally saw me, go go go!”

Nico doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s in drive and racing down the empty street before Will has the door closed.

For a while, he lets their heart rates settle back into something normal. The headlights are dim, no streetlights to make anything brighter, and he squints through the windshield, tense. If a deer jumps out, they’re fucked.

“So,” he says, relaxing as they turn onto familiarly torn-up roads. No street lights here, either, but he knows the woods on either side of the road are a farce. Hardly more than a copse of trees — nothing but farmland for hundreds of acres. No risk of death by Cervidae, thank God. “Running away?”

“There’s a rest stop an hour east,” Will says instead of answering, face buried in a map. “We can sleep there and keep going in the morning.”

Go where, Nico wants to ask, but he knows better than that. There’s a tenseness to Will’s jaw, and something transparently pleading in his eyes.

“Okay,” he finally relents. Will’s obvious relief eases his discomfort. “You gotta direct me, though. And, I swear to God, if you get us lost again, Solace —”

And Will laughs, finally, and it’s small and stilted and there are still tears drying on his cheeks, but it’s real, and stars shine brighter, brighter, brighter.

The two hours to the rest stop pass quickly. Nico is used to long drives, and thankfully he’d filled up a couple days ago, so all he worries about is staying awake and watching for cops. There shouldn’t be any, really, because he’s been the only car on this road the entire time, but Nico isn’t going to chance it. Not again. (He doesn’t have Piper to talk them out of trouble, this time, although Will could possibly manage.)

(Maybe.)

(Well, never say never.)

“How prepared are we to run away?”

Will is quiet for several long, telling moments.

“Well,” he says finally, and Nico sighs. “I think there’s still blankets and pillows in the trunk from last time.”

“Christ alive, William.”

“It’s June! We’re – sheltered! We’ll be fine.”

“Christ alive, William.”

“Oh, can it.”

He bites his tongue, grinning. He doesn’t actually mind – it is June, and they have blankets, and their certainly not going to succumb to the elements in the Jeep. Will, too, is like a goddamn space heater; if anything, they’ll wake up in the morning with the windows fogged.

“I suppose I’ll manage,” he says, watching with interest as a flash of bare skin as Will leans over the seat, sweatshirt riding up his arched back as he digs around for the blankets. He turns back right before Will does, huffing dramatically. “Since there are no other options.”

He fully expects the pillow to the face.

“You’re a dickhead.”

“Dickhead with a license and a vehicle, Sunny Boy, so maybe count your blessings.”

“...Lou Ellen has a car. So there.”

Nico snorts, thinking of the piece of shit Bug that broke down for the twelfth time this year in her driveway, earlier this week. Likely story.

“And, yet.”

“And, yet,” Will agrees, voice significantly softer. He’s fully burrowed in his blanket when Nico looks over; seat reclined as far as it’ll go so he can curl up, knees to chest, all six two of him compressed to something small, delicate. The pillow smushes half his face, and the blanket is pulled up to his nose, and Nico swallows, roughly, because his eyes are bright in the moonlight, and his hair fans, frizzy and damp, slightly, out onto the pillow, and Nico doesn’t need to be a poet to compare his freckled forehead to the starry sky. There is a fragility in him, one he keeps firmly locked inside the deepest parts of him, and as Nico watches it he can see it spilling, pouring, bleeding out of him. In the car, in the dark, in front of Nico. “Goodnight, Nico.”

“Goodnight,” Nico says hoarsely.

By the time he gets the courage to look at Will again, his eyes are already closed, breaths slow and even.

———

“Neeks. Neeks. Nico. Hey, Thanatos. Anubis. Gerard Way. I got more, man, I made a list –”

“Will you stop fucking poking me,” Nico groans, peeking out from his blankets to glare at his aggressor. He regrets it immediately, hissing as the sun burns his retinae.

He can feel Will smiling. “Up and at ‘em, Sunshine. It’s road trip time.” He pauses. “And, also, I’m starving. I packed granola bars for us but I ate them all already. Sorry.”

“Fucker.” Reluctantly, he tugs the blanket fully off, sitting upright and stretching his arms above his head. His back cracks satisfyingly. “Don’t suppose you know where the nearest Dunkin’ is, then.”

“Uh, no.” He looks back to find Will’s eyes snapping back to his, face flushed. “We’re just outside of Arcadia, though? So. I’m. Sure there’s one –”

“Are you good?” Nico asks, squinting. “It’s too early for you to be a weirdo, Will, it’s only –” He checks his phone – “Oh, you motherfucker, it’s like six thirty in the morning! Why the hell are we awake?”

“Road trip!” he says. His face, no longer all screwed up and blotchy, returns to its usual blinding beam.

Great. Now there are two things trying to blind him.

“C’mon, you dork,” Will says again, laughing. He tugs the blanket from Nico’s grip, tossing it haphazardly in the back and pestering him until he scowls, biting out a “Fine, you prick, Jesus,” and rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

He’s still not all the way awake, but he dutifully sits up, buckling his seat belt and starting the car. “Nav,” he mutters, tuning out Will’s chatter.

He loves the guy, but, fuck. It’s six thirty in the goddamned morning. He hasn’t seen six thirty in the morning in a long ass fucking time – even before he graduated at the end of May, he was late to homeroom every single day, without fail. Six thirty is an absurd time to be awake.

“Left here, straight for a bit, and it’ll be on the corner.”

“You’re pointing to the right,” Nico says, patiently, not bothering to fight the smirk cropping up on his face. "Am I turning right?"

This, he’s used to.

“I meant right,” Will sulks. “...I said right in my brain.”

“Sure,” says Nico generously, grin widening.

“Fuck off.”

“What? You try very hard, Will. I’m very proud of you.”

“Choke.”

“Few more years, and you’ll be caught up to the kindergarteners.”

“That’s it, di Angelo –”

He laughs, batting away Will’s smacking hands. “Hey! Hey! No hitting the driver, do you want me to crash –”

By the time Will is done trying to beat him up, Nico has long spotted the sad-looking Dunkin’ Donuts, pulling into the empty parking lot and peering inside.

“Is it even open?” he asks, frowning. The lights are on, but it looks…more soulless than usual, somehow.

“Yep,” Will chirps, clicking off his seatbelt. “The chain opens at five. There's a location in Omaha that's open at 4:30, but as far as their policy goes, five is go time.”

“Nerd.”

“It’s okay, Nico. I’ll stay friends with you even if you get dumber than you already are.”

He grins wickedly. “Least I know my lefts and rights.”

He cackles when Will slams the door, stomping to the Dunkin’s entrance. He’s not really mad – he gets quiet when he gets mad – but it’s good to know that he’s won. (Not that it’s hard. Will is witty, sure, and wicked smart, but his buttons are just a smidge too easy to press. Great fun for Nico, who has raging ADHD and could not resist the allure of a shiny red button if it was going to blow up the Earth with him on it.)

Will is nowhere to be found when Nico gets inside, so he assumes he’s in the washroom and walks up to the counter to make their order. A bored girl a couple years younger than him flips a magazine behind the register, nodding as he comes up.

“I’ll have a black coffee and a…” He squints. “God. A butter pecan swirl signature iced latte.”

“With whipped cream and caramel drizzle?”

Nico sighs, resisting the urge to physically wince. “Yes.”

“Anything else?” says the girl, smile pulling at her lips. “I can put sugar in a cup to go, if you want.”

“He’d probably take that, too,” he agrees snorting. “But nah. Just a couple breakfast sandwiches, if you don’t mind.”

“‘Course.”

She rings him up, letting him know it’s gonna take a minute as the machines boot up. He wanders while he waits, curiously observing a wall of what appears to be scrawled pencil graffiti. Nothing talented, but he has to fight the urge to walk out to the payphone he saw outside and call a few of the numbers, just to see what would happen.

“Hey,” Will says, startling him. He’s changed his shirt and tied his hair back, looking a million times better than last night. Nico finds himself relieved, shoulders slumping imperceptibly.

“Hey.”

“D’you order for us?”

“Got you your morning milkshake monstrosity, don’t worry.”

Will grins. “Drinking black coffee doesn’t make you cool.”

“It does, actually. At any given time I am forty-seven percent cooler than you. More, if you’re wearing cargo shorts.” He glances down. “It’s a forty-nine percent day, apparently.”

“Go wash your face,” Will laughs, shoving him. “I’ll get the food, then we can look at the map.”

He doesn’t take nearly as long as Will did. He brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face, decides his hair looks awesome the way it is – of course he didn’t forget a brush, why would he be a big enough dumbass to forget a brush and also more than one pair of socks – and walks back out. He finds Will tucked in a booth in a corner, chewing on a pink straw, eyeing their giant map intently.

“So,” he says as Nico approaches, handing him his coffee, “I did some math.”

Nico notices a napkin scrawled with ink that he could not read even if he wasn’t dyslexic.

“Geek.”

Will chucks his balled up straw wrapper at him. “We can go five hours-ish on a full tank of gas, and you’re a bit above a half tank, so we got maybe three hours before we need to stop.” He circles a little dot about a quarter way into the state, letters too small for Nico to read. “And since going anywhere near Orlando in the summer is asking to stick us in bumper-to-bumper traffic, that puts us in Anthony.”

“I did not know there was a town named Anthony,” Nico says sagely. “That’s a shit name for a town, if I’m being honest.”

WIll shrugs. “Welcome to Florida. Anyways. Want me to drive? You drove last night.”

“Barely,” Nico dismisses, waving his hand. He likes driving – it’s just scattered enough that he doesn’t get antsy. It’s being a passenger that kills him, although he’s sure they’ll switch on the way back so he can rest. “I’ll drive.”

“‘Kay.”

Will turns his attention back to the map, tapping his pen against the table in between bites of his breakfast sandwich. Every so often he returns to the napkin, scribbling something down and making little hums of concentration.

Nico begins to notice the route he’s drawing extends a ways past state lines.

“So,” he says carefully, eyes trained on his best friend. “Running away.”

Will tenses, again, at the mention of it, although this time he looks more stubborn than lost. Good.

“Road trip,” he corrects. “It’s our last summer, Nico. I turn eighteen in a couple months, and then…” He trails off. Nico waits out the silence, seven seconds, eight, nine. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? One last huzzah, road trip around the nation, or whatever?”

“Did you happen to tell your mother about this road trip?”

Will shrugs. “I left a note.”

Nico hums. “Sounds an awful lot like running away. I would know. I’ve been picked up by social services in three separate states.”

“Road trip,” Will corrects again, stubborn set to his brow.

Nico decides to let it go for now.

“Road trip,” he agrees. Will looks at him gratefully. “Where to?”

“That defeats the point of a road trip.” He rolls up the map, looking at Nico like it’s obvious. “Duh. Journey, not the destination, et cetera, et cetera.”

Privately, Nico bets that by tomorrow, Will be be restless and guilty and they will be on their way home. Outwardly, he says, “You have seen a truly disgusting amount of movies,” and Will laughs, and Nico follows him to the Jeep, and knows, as he always does, that he will follow him regardless; across the world, across the country, even back to Shit Fuck, Florida.

———

next chapter

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ria-starstruck · 1 year

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hollow knight ikea au.

#i have more ideas for an ikea au or whatever the hell this is im doing but. later #i have ideas for a family barbecue au also. yes i know both are anachronistic and impossible and don't suit the family dynamic but it is soo #funny #hollow knight #hollow knight fanart #hollow knight au #ikea au #....if that's a tag #hollow knight ikea au #hollow knight comic #i don't think pale king would actually b a driver. or a good driver #im agreeing w the comic i saw where hornet drove i think hornet would be a good driver #hollow knight would cause an accident by trying to adhere to the laws of the road too strictly. or they would simply not drive #white lady is a pedestrian #ghost would treat it like mario kart #artists on tumblr #traditional art #fanart

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etchy-a-sketchy · 2 months

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Wake up people!! Chapter 1 is here!!!!!

#my art #etchy’s sketchys #dreamworks trolls #a long road home #two left feet series #to hell and back #fanfiction #trolls band together #trolls #floyd #trolls branch #branch #trolls Floyd #crystal john dory au #rhonda #ITS HEEEEEEERE!!!!!!#HYPE HYPE HYPE

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aliendragondreaming · 2 months

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i am covered in so much foam

i am foam

#on a fr note idk how the hell im gonna finish my project in less than 4 days #nsr #no straight roads #zuke #mayday #b2j #bunk bed junction #rin 1010 #haym 1010 #purlhew 1010 #eloni 1010 #dragondoodles #dance fever au

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avonne-writes · 1 year

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Lucemond road trip au

Luke wants to find himself outside of his overbearing, big family, so he goes on an adventure.

Aemond is on the edge of existence, just wants to feel something he can name again. He drives without aim and picks up a random hitchhiker.

Well, it's his nephew. A bunch of emotions he's comfortably familiar with. Hate, anger and amusement.

Shit, it's Luke's uncle. But it can't be that bad, right? Aemond isn't actually a serial killer, haha... Besides, this is an open wound Luke wanted to mend for a long time. He hops in.

Dead silence in the car at first, then fighting over the music, then silence again

Aemond aggressively insisting that he'll drive, even beyond his limits

After a lot of arguing, they finally stop at some shady motel Aemond wants to scare Luke with.

Eating dinner together at a diner. Knees brushing. Aemond takes the pickles out of his burger - Luke snatches them off his plate. Both lying about why they are on the road.

*and there was only ONE bed*

Luke whispers things to Aemond as they lie there stiffly under the covers. Aemond grunts, but listens until they fall asleep.

They wake up with their hands pressed together. Aemond spends long minutes just enjoying the contact before he realizes what he's doing.

The next day goes better, even though the pressure in Aemond's chest rises as his familiar emotions begin to warp into tangles and knots he doesn’t understand.

Luke wants to stop at weird, random sights.

There's a bar by the next motel. Someone hits on Luke there. Aemond almost explodes in possessive rage.

The following day, they pick up another hitchhiker who makes observations that piss Aemond off. The tension rises again after they finally drop that person off.

They wash their stuff at a laundromat late at night, sharing stories and having fun together for once. Luke sits on a machine and Aemond puts his hands on either side of Luke as they laugh. They stare at each other as their smiles slowly fade.

Luke falls asleep in the car when the night is dark and you can see the canopy of stars that blanket the empty road. Aemond looks at him and feels - safe. Drifting through the night with Luke dreaming next to him feels more like home than any other place he knows.

Over the next few days, they bond over the stuff they see and flirt with each other, more and more deliberately.

At one point, they both know that it's going to happen. Their touches are not platonic anymore - a hand brushing Luke’s neck, Luke’s fingers on Aemond's thigh, a head on a shoulder. But no kiss. No relief. Something is missing.

Aemond keeps getting calls but he never picks up. Curious, Luke looks at the phone during a break. It's Alicent.

He brings it up in the car and they get into an explosive fight.

Aemond stops in the middle of nowhere and just walks into an empty field to breathe while Luke yells at him, truths so cutting that Aemond feels blinded by the pain.

When it's over and there's nothing left to scream, they decide they will part ways in the next city. For the first time, Aemond lets Luke drive just so that they can reach the place faster. Despite himself, he falls asleep.

Luke looks at him over and over again. His heart aches. He stops at a motel and gets them a room with two beds.

In the darkness and silence of the night, Aemond comes to him quietly. Sits on the edge of Luke’s bed, and when Luke sits up too, he breathes out and slumps into his embrace. Luke strokes his hair and holds him. Aemond tightens his arms.

His lips brush Luke's neck, right above the collar of Luke’s shirt. Luke freezes, but doesn’t pull back, and Aemond’s mouth takes that as encouragement to map out his skin further, all the invisible paths that connect his jaw with his shoulder.

"Aemond." He says, but the end of the word is lost in the kiss that captures his lips.

#lucemond #aemond targaryen #lucerys velaryon #my writing #road-trip-au #this would be angsty as hell

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vroomian · 4 months

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There sure is a lot of lbh in this fic that wasn’t supposed to have him be there at alll

#me rn: 🤡🤡🤡#Lbh and yrzs epic road-trip through hell #Bitter water au #Boi what are youDOING HERE!!!#Stop interacting with the narrative!!#Svsss

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princess-of-the-corner · 6 months

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the writing vibes have SUCKED today so like. I'm gonna try and sleep. But yeet asks about my bnha fics.

#either cc or road to hell/tpp/pr team or the monster au or that vigilante thing

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quietwingsinthesky · 10 months

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i was trying to think of a way around Lisa & Ben in an Anna lives au but honestly it’s just funnier to me if Lisa’s bisexual and when Dean shows up with this random woman, she’s like ‘oh cool so this is a threesome now. nice. how does she feel about doing dishes because I hate that and so do you.’

#like realistically a post-s5 Anna/Dean au is them taking off to the road and disregarding Sam’s wish to forget him and live their lives #because Dean has literally been to hell and Anna’s an angel raised in Cage horror stories #and no way are they leaving him in there are you crazy #(this au is samifer adjacent. because I’m me. Sam is fine.)#but like. the idea that dean still goes to Lisa and just. brings Anna with him.#and Lisa’s cool with it alsjfklfjslfj YEAH OKAY.#she was already in this for a trophy husband now she gets a trophy wife too? win.#everyone at the neighborhood barbecue is sooo jealous #spn #anna/dean #anna milton #dean winchester #lisa braeden

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demonicchicken1121 · 5 months

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I love imagining all the weird shit that happens to Michael after hes scooped. Like he and Henry are just starting to get a good routine, and then some crazy corpse shit happens. I just had the thought that the remnant would make his body just start producing blood again, and he just wakes up and is like, "Henry. hELP."

#fnaf #micheal afton #henry emily #scooped michael #fnaf au #fnaf road to hell #road to hell au

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sunshowersanddandelionwine · 3 months

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After they figure out that soap’s a dragon, the rest of the 141 start to subtly (or not so subtly) encourage him to build up his hoard a little more. While Ghost and Gaz have little to no exposure to dragons, Laswell and Price have first hand experience with them and know that a dragon without a full and healthy hoard can be in danger or a danger.

Soon enough, soap’s hoard consists of:

Pretty rocks and sea glass that Gaz found the last time he was near a beach

An old tattered hat Price retired

Bullet they pulled out of Ghost’s shoulder one time

Pop tabs and bottle caps from various deployments

An old balaclava that barely has the skull print visible

A mass market paperback book from an airport bookstore, the spine broken and pages yellowed and dog eared

Various shirts made unwearable from rips and holes

Soap bar keychain from a shitty little souvenir shop

Assorted flash drives and memory sticks

A single stud earring without the back post

It’s not the prettiest hoard, but it’s precious and it’s all his.

#road to hell au #cod mw2 #cod mwf2 #john soap mactavish #cod mwii #tf 141 #wayward seeds

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skeleton-in-a-hoodie · 1 month

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Been thinking about The Road to Hell Leo and Yoshi's relationship.

I think whilst their relationship is definitely loving, and Leo would walk over coals if it kept his nephew happy and safe, it's also defined by grief and regret.

Leo blames himself for his older sister's death, for how she isn't able to be there to raise her son.

And even though Yoshi is a rat mutant, Leo sees so much of Karai in Yoshi. Even with the mutation, he has his mother's eyes and some days Leo can't look at Yoshi, because it feels like Karai is watching him through her son's eyes and Leo just can't handle it.

Yoshi acts like her too - he inherited her temper, but also her loyalty. He fights like a demon for his family, and Leo sees her every time Yoshi protects his sisters. Yoshi is Karai's baby boy, even though she never got the chance to raise him.

He's been his brothers' leader since they were kids, so he also blames himself for Saki's death too, who in this au was Yoshi's twin. Leo can't imagine a life without his brothers in it, and knows that as dark as things have gotten, just having them by his side made the darkness seem a little less grim. Even when he and his brothers argued, they were always the light at the end of the tunnel, guiding Leo home.

Until June, Mayday, and later Shadow, came along, Leo couldn't help but think about how Yoshi didn't have that. He looked at his dear nephew, and saw a childhood of loneliness and isolation, of never having the companionship Leo had enjoyed so much because it wasn't like their rat mutant nephew could go to school with the other little kids.

Even after Yoshi gains his sisters, Leo thinks about his other nephew and what it must be like to come into the world with another and then be ripped away from them. He knows it affects Yoshi, because he can see how the child looks at photos of his twin.

There are many, many nights were Leo wonders if maybe he was a better leader, a better brother, then perhaps Karai and Saki might have lived and Yoshi wouldn't have lost so much before he could even walk.

When Yoshi was young, the guilt was at its worst and Leo, who's always been good with kids and was once so excited to be an uncle, couldn't bear to be near him. The little boy would look up at him with so much love and it would break Leo's heart, because why does he get to experience this and not his sister? Why does Yoshi seek him out for advice, for affection, for advice?

It ate away at Leo, even more so when he realised it was hurting Yoshi, because Yoshi would see the guilt in Leo's eyes and would think he'd done something wrong, that he'd upset sensei somehow. Yoshi always wanted to be a good nephew and student, and so when he thought he'd made a mistake, he did his best to make up for it. And Leo didn't know how to tell Yoshi that he hadn't done anything wrong, but Leo had and he was so sorry.

Leo is petrified in this au of becoming his father and hurting his nephew the way he and his brothers were, so seeing himself hurting Yoshi without meaning to makes him pull away even more, slipping further and further into the role of teacher whilst Yoshi chased his approval, because Leo wasn't like that with Mayday or June, so Yoshi must have done something wrong to make sensei act like this.

Things got better after Raph held an intervention, after which Leo and Yoshi started spending time together. It was awkward, at first, and it took a while to convince Yoshi that he hadn't done anything wrong. Though, unknown to everyone else, a seed had been planted in that boy's heart that he needed to prove himself to be worthy of uncle's affection, and what better way to prove himself than be the best ninja the world had ever seen?

As time went on, Leo and Yoshi bonded, and slowly but surely seeing his sister in Yoshi's eyes hurt less and less, because it got easier to see Yoshi as just Yoshi, and not his dead sister's surviving son.

And then the Foot clan come to New York, and everything becomes so much more complicated than it was before

#tmnt #tmnt 2012 #tmnt au #tmnt ageswap au #the road to hell au #leo loves his nephew so much #but there's so much guilt and grief alongside that love #and that's hard for a child to process

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mediumgayitalian · 2 months

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previous chapter

———

“Take the exit here.”

“How come?” Nico asks, dutifully putting on his blinker and merging into the right lane. “We’re not even at half tank.”

Will clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s, uh, not for gas.”

A pause.

“Oh, Solace, you’re fucking kidding me.”

“I’m sorry!”

Nico throws his hands up, ignoring Will’s screech of both hands on the wheel, I value my life! “There is no possible way you have to piss already. You had half a slushie!”

“...Well.”

“William Andrew Solace, I swear to God.”

“I got distracted!” Will cries, eyes big and round as he pouts. “The Abstract Iron Centaur is a monument, okay, I forgot what the point of the rest stop was for.”

Nico groans. “I’m not sure you should be allowed to go to medical school. You’re going to forget a scalpel in someone’s lungs, or something.”

Immediately, he knows this is the wrong thing to say. The sheepish grin vanishes off Will’s face, replaced with something despairing, before it’s hastily shoved back on.

The winding road finally gives way to the advertised rest stop, partially obscured by a Welcome to Georgia sign with a modernist-style image of a peach that annoys him for no reason. We’re glad Georgia’s on your mind. (False. Georgia is never on his mind, except for how Will can’t say Georgia without slipping into his accent and Nico has to take that golden opportunity to mock him. And then die.)

“Right,” Will says finally. He forces a laugh. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, then gets out of the car without so much as a word.

Nico watches him go.

“Well,” he mutters to himself. “Shit.”

He waits in the car as long as he physically can, which is anything between thirty seconds and four business days. A glance at his watch informs him it’s closer to two minutes.

He kicks a stone across the parking lot, debating the implications of searching for his friend. It hasn’t really been that long, so he’s not sure it’s socially appropriate, and then he wonders when the hell he started caring about being socially appropriate. They are friends, after all, because in a group icebreaker question about siblings in seventh grade, Nico had growled none, on the account that she was killed by a drunk driver when I was ten and Will had laughed, brightly and morbidly, and said hey, my brothers were murdered, too! Twinsies! and killed the vibe rather brilliantly for literally everybody else in the room.

He gives into his impulse eventually, striding onto the surprisingly soft grass and looking, halfheartedly, around the spacious grounds (he’d decided searching the bathroom would be a touch too far). His mission gets sidetracked, however, because the heat is less oppressive under the shade of tall, weeping willows, and there’s a small breeze, and he is struggling to shove his various musings into the Repression Box where they belong.

Will, starts one of said musings, has been acting weird as shit long before he showed up at his house in the middle of the night.

It had started around January? If he had to guess. But Will is always kind of weird in the winter, so he hadn’t thought much of it, just offered to break into his house more often so he didn’t feel too suffocated. The usual. But the strangeness had persisted through the spring – the sudden drops in mood, the hair-triggers to clam him up. Both of which are usually a Nico thing. Will, more often, just shoves all his negative emotions down to the bottom of his soul until he gets one half-mark wrong on a test and sobs himself sick about being useless while Nico stands guard outside the bathroom door, agonised, unsure how to help. And then the two of them never talk about it again.

Over the last few months, things have been a little less balanced.

“Hey.”

Nico jumps. Will stands slightly, shoulders still hunched slightly, but definitely less cagey than earlier. He holds out a cup of coffee Nico recognises as from a vending machine.

“Hi,” Nico says softly, smiling tentatively. He takes the coffee. It’s black, and too hot, just how he likes it.

“You are going to stain your teeth,” Will observes, as he always does.

“Bite me,” Nico responds, following the script.

A genuine smile pulls at his face.

“You ready to get back on the road?”

“Yep.”

They fall into step in their hike back to the Jeep – Nico hiked farther than he meant to. Will’s flip-flops slapping rhythmically against the packed dirt of the trail is a familiar sound, and it eases some of his own tension, putting a bit more prep in his step. When he glances quickly over, Will is breathing normally, shoulders slack, much calmer expression on his face.

“You should let me drive,” he says as they approach. “You’ve been behind the wheel since practically dawn; maybe you should take a nap or something.”

Nico shakes his head, waving a dismissive arm. Frowning slightly, Will acquiesces, climbing back into the passenger side.

“I’ve had two coffees and half a slushie,” he explains, resting his hand on the back of Will’s seat. He cranes his neck behind him, careful of the family walking an unleashed dog as he pulls out. “I’m good forever.”

“Caffeine doesn’t work on you,” Will points out.

Nico pauses.

“...True.”

He hadn’t realise Will had noticed, actually. Although he supposes it’s not too surprising – Will has known him a long time, Will is observant, and Will generally enjoys lecturing people about anything he can get away with, up to and including their general health and safety. Nico, in all his bad choices, is a favourite target of his. He can probably recite his solo midnight speed driving from memory.

“It’s just –” Will stops, waiting until Nico’s safely merged back on the highway before continuing. “It’s three and a half hours ‘till we get to Atlanta, Neeks, and it’s already three-thirty. We’ll have to stop again for food, probably, at one point, and we’ll have to stop for food, soon, and who knows what the traffic will be like –”

Carefully passing the person going sixty in front of him, finally breaking into open road, Nico takes half an eye off the road and digs through the centre console.

“– I mean, if it’s bumper to bumper, then what? It’ll be rush hour soon, shit, I shoulda planned for that, shit, do we have a jerrycan? We should have a jerrycan, remind me to get a jerrycan for the trunk –”

Finally catching sight of the CD he’s looking for (and barely managing to swerve and avoid a massive pothole that would have for sure cut their trip short, but he managed, so take that, Reckless Driving Lecture Will that lives in his brain, who’s God now), he hands it to Will. Still actively stressing about literally nothing, he opens it, polishing the disc on habit and sliding it into the slot without so much as pausing.

Nico smirks.

Yeah, maybe he knows his friend, too.

“– I mean, just blankets and a first aid kit is not enough. Really, we should have some provisions in there. Oh, and rope, ‘cause what if we get stranded in the mountains –”

The radio clicks as it reads the disc, then, suddenly and without warning, the stereo rumbles with heavy bass and pounding beat.

Will cuts himself off. “Hey, is this –”

Nico smirks wider. He chances another look away from the road, just in time to watch a magnificent smile break across Will’s face, wide and a little crooked, showing all his molars – a real one, the one he gets when he’s caught off-guard, the one that makes his hands fluttery.

“You’re playing In The Zone!” he exclaims, laughing delightedly. “Without complaining!”

Bingo, Nico thinks.

“Technically, I didn’t play shit.” He gestures at the empty CD case in Will’s hand. “You’re just like a hermit crab. I hand you things, you hold them.”

“Shut up.” But there’s no bite to the command, smile still stretching wide. If Nico looks, he can see the tiny snag of his barely crooked front tooth, but he doesn’t look, because he doesn’t care about that, obviously. He has his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel, fully focused.

Obviously.

They do get into disgusting traffic. Will is distressed about it, up until someone cuts them off so closely they both nearly actually and genuinely die, and he is immediately lit up in a rage so incandescent Nico wonders if he will ever be able to look away from straining biceps and a clenched jaw ever again. More distantly, he wonders if and I hope you get three consecutive aneurysms and your family leaves you to fucking rot in a hospital bed, you leprous shitdick will be on loop in his head for the rest of time. He kind of wants to put it on a shirt. Will’s linguistic talents should be studied.

“Stop thinking about it,” Will demands, socking him (hard! What the shit!) in the shoulder. His face resembles, quite exactly, the shade of the setting sun. “Purge it from your memory.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Nico responds, smirking.

“I wasn’t –” A pause. Nico bites back a snort. “Cutting people off is just so rude.”

“Oh, of course.”

“I mean! I mean.”

“Indeed.”

“If it was – an ambulance, or something, I would understand, but he cut us off just to get immediately stuck in the same traffic! I don’t understand the point!”

“Truly the behaviour of a leprous shitdick,” Nico agrees. His grin starts to genuinely hurt his face, but he ignores it in favour of snickering.

Will sinks into his seat, pulling his hoodie over his eyes. His ears, as usual, stick out a little, and they’re red, too. Nico nobly resists the urge to flick them.

“I hate you.”

“I think you’re quite attached to me, actually. After all, I’m not a –”

“If I hear the word leprous come from your mouth one more fucking time, di Angelo, I’ll give you leprosy. For real. I’ll find it.”

Will probably could find a vial of pure leprosy somewhere, actually, so Nico shuts up. (He’s seen Will’s weird vial collection. Most of it is just, like, various bacteria, he’s pretty sure, but Will is kind of morbid and Nico knows his sense of humour is garbage because Nico’s sense of humour is garbage, and there is a reason they’re friends, and if Nico found a vial of leprosy somewhere he would keep it, too. Can leprosy be vialed? Who knows. Will, probably.)

Once he’s sure Nico is not going to tease him anymore about his temper tantrum, or at least for the moment, he turns back to his book. Every so often, he looks up, observes the three miles per hour they’re crawling, and sighs, loudly and lengthy to himself, muttering something about railway systems and zoning laws and government incompetence. Nico doesn’t ask. He was free from the jail that was history and geography lessons last month. He is determined to learn absolutely nothing for the next six months, at least.

“I’m paying for the motel or hotel or inn et cetera,” Will says, randomly.

“No,” Nico replies, easily.

Will reaches out, calmly, and pinches him on the thigh. Nico does not yelp indignantly because he is a Man, and can handle Will’s weirdly pointy fingers.

“You paid for gas.”

“Yep.”

“And you have car payments.”

“Mhm.”

“And you bought Dunkin’s.”

“True.”

“Nico,” Will says exasperatedly, “this whole damn trip was my idea. Let me pay for shit.”

“I enjoy wasting my father’s money,” Nico counters, and Will pauses, considering. “Come on, commie. I know the idea of spending a banker’s money on stupid shit pleases you.”

He knows he’s starting to win, because Will sighs in a very particular way that Nico has identified as why am I letting this dumbass get away with this again, says, “Spending money is capitalist, Nico,” and turns, begrudgingly, back to his book.

Poorly hidden behind the pages, he’s smiling.

Nico tallies his victory.

The traffic finally eases by around eight o’clock. Victorious, surely, except that they’re still quite a ways from Atlanta. He considers getting off at one of the various exits promising shelter, and in fact decides he is going to, but for some reason, his hand never drifts to his blinker. Never turns the wheel slightly to merge, never eases off the gas. He keeps going, an going, and going, music playing softly, stars beginning to shine through the darkening sky.

Beside him, Will lets out tiny puffs as he exhales, even and sluggish.

“You are a grandmother,” he whispers fondly, shaking his head. In the quiet of the road, interrupted only by the whipping whipping winds – he should have pulled the roof back up when they were stuck, shit – and odd flash of headlights of a passing car, he lets himself soften, sighing back against his seat and easing up slightly on the gas.

Will glows, faintly, in the moonlight.

It’s funny, ‘cause he’s a sun child. Nico has teased him about it for years, in fact; his hair, his bright blue eyes, his stubborn clinging to his aesthetic of wannabe surfer boy. The gold ring he wears on his thumb, the sun pendant that rests on his heart. Swathed in yellows and blues and golds, all the time, with a sprinkling of bright green and neon orange just to remind everyone that yes, he is red green colourblind, and no, that will not stop him from making fashion choices.

But the silver suits him. It softens him, instead of washing him out, reminding Nico that the sun shines white. The low light casts gentle shadows on his face, too, drawing attention to his strong brow and straight nose.

Forcing his eyes back on the road, where they should have been the whole time, Jesus, he notices the giant green Downtown Atlanta sign, and follows its arrows. The first exit he sees, he turns, getting lost three times before he finds the hotel that was advertised.

Pulling into the largely empty parking lot, he shuts off the car, then turns to Will, screwing up his face. He has to wake him up, at some point. Obviously. Unfortunately he cannot simply melt into the shadows and reappear in a hotel room. As awesome as that would be, with his luck, he’d pop into an occupied one, and that’d be a whole host of problems.

Deciding he’ll actually get them a room first, he heads inside, speaking quietly with the desk host.

“Single or double?” they ask pleasantly, voice similarly lowered for the hour.

“Uh,” Nico says, “double?”

The host pauses, eyebrows flicking up at his hesitation. “...Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Nico flushes. He adds, belatedly, “Please.”

Eyebrow raised in amusement, the host reaches into a drawer and pulls out two sleek key cards, tucking them into a little envelope thing and handing them over. “Room 409,” they say, nodding towards the elevator.

“Thanks,” Nico responds, and walks out the door. He realises, as he exits, how much of a general failure he is at communicating with people who are not Will, and considers climbing through the window of his sixth floor room out of sheer embarrassment. The realization that he does not have the skill to drag Will up there with him is the only thing that stops him.

“Sunshine,” he murmurs, once he’s gathered their bags and some of the red has faded from his face, “we’re here.”

Will hums a little, voice gravelly. Nico’s lip quirk up.

“Where?”

“Somewhere to sleep.”

“‘M sleepin’ jus’ fine.”

His accent is so, so heavy with sleep, and it’s just – God, he wishes Wil hadn’t trained himself out of it. In Nico’s professional opinion, Will should talk like that all the time.

Authenticity, and all that.

“C’mon, Will.”

After another minute of coaxing – which Nico indulges purely because he knows for a fact Solace will have no memory of it in the morning, in any other circumstance he’d poke him awake – Will uncurls enough to stagger to his feet, stumbling as he gets out of the vehicle. For his own safety, Nico wraps an arm around his narrow hips, guiding him up to the room.

“Mnhgh,” he mumbles, the second the heavy door closes behind them. He walks two steps to the nearest bed, face plants in the middle of it, and starts snoring, feet hanging off the end, one flip-flip still stubbornly clinging to his foot.

“Dork,” Nico murmurs. He gets ready like a normal person, tugging on a sleep shirt – might be an old one of Will’s, actually, because Nico certainly never bought a Shania Twain concert t-shirt – and wrapping up in the wonderfully plush blankets. “Goodnight, Will.”

He gets a snore in response. He burrows deeper into the covers, smiling, drifting off to the sound of his best friend’s rhythmic breathing.

———

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